What is the CQC? All about the Care Quality Commission
04 January 2021
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Last edited: March 2022
The CQC, or the Care Quality Commission, independently regulates health and social care in England.
Through this regulation, the CQC ensures that people have access to the care they need, and that this care is safe, effective, compassionate and of high quality. They follow 5 CQC standards to ensure the quality and safety of care in organisations:
- Safe – you’re protected from abuse and avoidable harm
- Effective – your care, treatment and support achieves good outcomes
- Caring – staff involve and treat you with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect
- Responsive – services are organised so that they meet your needs
- Well-led – the leadership, management, and governance of the organisation make sure it’s providing high quality care
What does the CQC do?
The Care Quality Commission register care providers, and monitor, inspect and rate the services they provide. It protects people who use care services, by taking action against any inadequate care and support providers.
Through publishing what they find, from an overall rating to more detailed information, the CQC ensures the public are informed about any care organisation they may be considering using. Find about more about what the CQC does in our blog ‘What does the CQC do?’.
How does the CQC work?
Throughout its inspections, the CQC uses information and evidence to draw conclusions, including people’s views and experiences of care. This enables them to analyse data and suggest improvements to quality of care. It works with the public, other organisations and local groups to ensure people are provided with safe effective care. This includes care providers, NHS England, Ofsted and more.
The CQC carries out a range of inspections and visits alongside the regular inspections, such as children’s services to ensure effective safeguarding, monitoring the Mental Health Act, and inspecting health and care in the criminal justice system.
Who do the CQC regulate?
Health and social care is a broad term, so which organisations do the CQC regulate?
- Hospitals, both NHS and private
- GPs
- Dentists
- Ambulances
- Mental health services
- Care homes
- Treatment in people’s own homes
- Social care services
What are the ratings provided by the CQC?
Using the five standards, the CQC rates organisations on a scale: outstanding, good, requires improvements, or inadequate. This information is freely available, meaning any member of the public can choose care correctly for either themselves or a loved one.
Health and social care organisations are rated on each of the 5 standards, as well as overall. If somewhere rates inadequate, they must carry out actions to improve the care services they provide people or risk being shut down. In this way, the CQC ensures compassionate, high quality care through inspecting health and social care organisations.
What are the CQC’s values?
The CQC describe their values as:
- Excellence – be high-performing as an organisation
- Caring – everyone should be treated with dignity and respect
- Integrity – ensure they’re doing the right thing
- Teamwork – be the best they can be by learning from each other in the organisation
How can Radar Healthcare help you improve your CQC rating?
At Radar Healthcare, we understand that a visit from the CQC can be daunting. That’s why our software is both focused on the service users to help deliver safe, effective and person-centred care, and built around software users to ensure it’s simple to implement and apply in your organisation.
We’ll provide you with a KLOE audit to practice the 5 CQC standards and ensure you’re ready for your next inspection.
Shifting their rating from inadequate to good – a case study of Gorsey Clough: residential care
At Radar Healthcare, we have many case studies showing how our customers love our system. When it comes to the CQC, Gorsey Clough stands out as using our software to bring about impressive results.
Moving from an ‘Inadequate’ to a ‘Good’ CQC rating in such a short period of time is a significant achievement and the implementation of Radar Healthcare has been instrumental in this. We have an overall picture of the quality of care we are delivering; we can see where things are going wrong but more importantly, we have access to data and information which helps us prevent things from going wrong in the first place. It has provided the team and the CQC with confidence that we now have the systems in place to deliver the highest standard of care.
